Fairfield Girls Memorial Home history in brief
In 1922 Wesley Central Mission established the Fairfield Girls Memorial Home for pregnant, unmarried girls. Many of the babies born there were transferred to the Methodist Babies Home.
The number of women at Fairfield Girls Home peaked at about 150 per year in the late 1960s, but declined to a handful by 1973.
In 1973, Wesley Central Mission shifted focus to the growing need for emergency domestic violence accommodation, and converted the Fairfield Girls Home into a refuge known as Georgina House.
In 1987, the facility at Fairfield was closed and the refuge operations were transferred to other houses in the community.
Warning about distressing information
This guide contains information that some people may find distressing. If you experienced abuse as a child or young person in an institution mentioned in this guide, it may be a difficult reading experience. Guides may also contain references to previous views, policies and practices that are regrettable and do not reflect the current views, policies or practices of the department or the State of Victoria. If you find this content distressing, please consult with a support person either from the Department of Health and Human Services or another agency.
Disclaimer
Please note that the content of this administrative history is provided for general information only and does not purport to be comprehensive. The department does not guarantee the accuracy of this administrative history. For more information on the history of child welfare in Australia, see Find & .
Sources
Guide to out-of-home care services 1940–2000: volume one – agency descriptions, compiled by James Jenkinson Consulting, North Melbourne, November 2001.
List of records held by the department
For information relating to the central management of care leavers and wards of state, please consult the guide to Central department wardship and out-of-home care records. These collections date back to the 1860s and include ward registers, index cards and ward files.
Register of admission, discharges, transfers and adoptions (ledger book) (1938–43)
Volume; Unappraised
Content: The contents of the volume are not financial ledger entries, even though the volume is labelled as a ledger. The ruled ledger columns have been roughly used to organise information about mothers and children recorded on the pages. Different information is recorded in different parts of the volume. Sections record information including the following.
Pages 22–69:
- private adoptions of babies
- name of mother and baby coming to home in conjunction with the Methodist Babies Home office
- babies transferred to the Methodist Babies Home
- names of babies admitted to the home.
Pages 150–159:
- names of mothers and babies, mothers taking their babies home
- statistics on numbers of mothers, babies, adoptions, transfers and so on.
Where recorded, names of girls include family and given names; of adopting parents, family name and address; of babies, family and given name or name of mother and gender.
The single item in this collection was transferred to Archival Services by the Wesley Mission, Melbourne in January 2010. A letter dated 19 January 2010, placed loosely inside the front cover of the volume, together with a completed Archival Transfer Application Form, requested acceptance of the transfer.
The item is a slim volume with a label reading, ‘ledger’ on its front cover. Inside, the volume appears to once have had provision for an alphabetical index. All pages of the index, except for one marked Y and Z have been removed. There are no index entries.
Subsequent pages are numbered sequentially from 21–160. Pages 1–20 have been removed at some time and page 160 is pasted onto the back cover, and is thus not accessible. Pages 29–30 and 59–60 are missing.
Departmental administration
Voluntary children’s homes files (c.1930–c.85)
File; Permanent (VPRS Number 18069 / P0002)
Content: The files record interaction between the various voluntary homes and the government. This filing system was created in 1975, combining earlier correspondence and other records to create one system with VH prefixes.
The specific file relating to this home is titled ‘Methodist Central Mission – Fairfield’. The file dates from 1960 to 1963 and includes:
• inspector’s report, 12 July 1960: includes description of staff and building, 24 antenatal women and five children, two of whom were wards, in residence. Two children arrive daily.
• annual inspection, 19 June 1962: 24 antenatal cases; one-quarter chose to keep their babies. Three infant life protection children and two wards in residence.
• inspector’s report 5 April 1963: 28 mothers and three state wards in residence.
Reviewed 31 August 2016